Gunshot at police HQ brings back memories of bombing in 1968

Published 7:00 pm, Thursday, March 4, 2010

NORWALK

By STEVE KOBAK

Hour Staff Writer

The gunshot-damaged window in the community room at Norwalk Police headquarters Tuesday night reminds some current and former officers of an act of domestic terrorism that rocked the old police station 42 years ago.

Whereas the gunman in Tuesday's shooting did not intentionally hit the window at the police station, the two men who detonated a bomb outside of the department's former West Avenue headquarters on March 18, 1968, knew what they were doing

"They were bad kids," said Frederick "Moose" Miller, a former police captain who retired in 1976.

In Tuesday's incident, a gunman fired a single shot that hit the community room window while a janitor was mopping a floor in the room, police said.

Two other men were stalking the gunman at 8:20 p.m. on the corner of Monroe and South Main Street when he turned around and opened fire on them, missing the men but hitting the window, according to Chief Harry Rilling.

Police had no new details on the shooting Thursday and denied The Hour access to the surveillance footage taken outside of police headquarters at the time of the incident.

Rilling said Wednesday that the 1968 bombing was the only incident that he could compare to Tuesday's shooting.

According to previously published articles in The Hour, two men detonated the bomb by attaching 100 feet of telephone wire to a car battery in a Norwalk Parking Authority station wagon.

The blast blew out 16 windows and damaged the brick exterior of the building and sent tremors through the city. No one was injured in the explosion, but at the time, officers told The Hour that the force of the blast nearly knocked them off their chairs.

"It was all in a day's work, to be honest with you," said Miller. "Those things happen. It's just a question of how you read things, but everybody was a little upset, to put it lightly."

The suspects drove away in a 1950s-model sedan shortly after the explosion.

Miller, who was not inside the building at the time of the blast, said the damage left in the wake of the bombing "wasn't too impressive."

"It just damaged some of the brick wall," he said. "Broke some windows, too."

The suspects may have been targeting the Special Services Division, which had an office in the basement of the building at the time of the explosion, according to Miller.

"That'll get your attention," he said.

Miller said at the time of the bombing, many Norwalk Police officers were veterans of World War II and combat had somewhat toughened them.

"Some of us, if not all of us, were used to loud noises," he said.

While police investigated the bombing, militant, left-wing factions were growing in popularity because of the public outcry over the Vietnam War and the murders of Dr. Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and other political leaders. Miller said the emerging wave of domestic terrorism gave police a wide range of angles to explore.

"It was a time of upheaval," he said.

Eventually, two Danbury men were arrested in connection with the crime.